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rivate life insurer PT Asuransi Allianz Life Indonesia predicts the life insurance industry will become more stable in 2015 after suffering a sharp decline this year. However, it may lose some of its corporate clients to the national health insurance (JKN) program.

According to Allianz country manager and president director Joachim Wessling, the company '€” part of German financial services company Allianz SE '€” expects the industry to take a breather after a series of challenges.

'€œThis year we experienced several hiccups, such as general elections, a subsidized fuel price increase and a raise in interest rate,'€ he said on Thursday.

Combined with a slowdown in the domestic economy, the hiccups had led to the overall industry recording flagging business throughout 2014.

The latest statistics published by the Indonesian Life Insurance Association (AAJI) confirmed the situation, with total premium income rising by 2 percent annually to Rp 86.92 trillion (US$6.92 billion) during the first nine months of this year.

The industry posted a negative result in income from new business, which was down 9.6 percent to Rp 49.35 trillion as of September.

Allianz'€™s own nine-month financial report shows its net premium income reached Rp 3.82 trillion, rising 22.9 percent year-on-year.

'€œFor next year, we want our business to grow between 50 and 100 percent higher than GDP [gross domestic product]. That will hopefully put our growth higher than the market'€™s,'€ he said.

The government has set next year'€™s GDP growth target at 5.8 percent.

Meanwhile, despite its confidence that the situation will improve in 2015, Allianz says it stands to lose several corporate clients to the JKN program, which is provided by the Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan).

The presidential regulation on the program requires all firms to enroll their employees in the program by Jan. 1, 2015 at the latest, with a payment rate set at 4 percent of each employee'€™s salary.

The regulation has caused uproar among employers, which said they would see ballooning costs and downgrades in healthcare benefits already provided to their employees.

According to Angelia Agustine, the head of Allianz'€™s group policy management and claims, 20 percent of its corporate clients have expressed their intentions to discontinue their Allianz group policies because they will not be able to afford both the JKN program and those policies.

'€œThere are three categories of corporate clients. The first consists of companies that can afford the JKN and private group policies. The second lists firms that can afford both, but with adjustments here and there,'€ she said.

'€œThe third composes of firms that can only afford the JKN. About 80 percent of our clients are in the first category,'€ she said, adding that the life insurer had around 3,000 corporate clients as of now.

Allianz chief operating officer Todd Swihart said it had established a specific new division, called Allianz Health and Corporate Solutions (AHCS), to assist corporate clients as the corporate segment represented 15 percent of its business.

Part of the AHCS includes a Hospital Cash Plan product that will allow cash payments to be made daily to cover medical expenses that are not included in the JKN program.